2006 may long be remembered for the rush to achieve 1080p display resolution, just as 1898 is remembered for the Yukon Gold Rush. Yet there were very few prospectors who actually made money back then - it was the general stores and outfitters who raked in most of the cash, selling clothing, food, and tools to those northbound dreamers.

Panning gold in the Yukon was supposed to be the ticket to Easy Street, with nuggets lying on the ground and washing out of streams by the bucketful. In reality, few miners were able to find claims that paid out enough to cover their expenses and leave some extra change in their pockets for the long boat ride home.

Things haven’t changed all that much in 108 years! 1080p was supposed to be the zenith of projection and HDTV technology, the Holy Grail of the home theater marketplace, and the magic fix to prop up HDTV retail prices that have been falling faster than snow in an Alaskan blizzard.

But it hasn’t really worked out that way. In fact, street prices of 1080p microdisplay HDTVs are hitting the levels of comparably sized 720p and 768p sets from late 2004. 37-inch 1080p LCD monitors are now available for less than $2,000, with 42-inch models hovering in the $2500 - $3000 range.

Only the new 1080p plasma sets (which are trickling into the market) and a handful of 1080p home theater projectors command substantial premiums over 720p/768p models.

But that will change as we move into 2007. It’s now possible to find both 720p/768p single-chip DLP and 3-panel LCD home theater projectors for less than $2,000. So how much of a premium will a customer pay for another 1,000,000 pixels?

In the plasma world, Pioneer and Panasonic seem to be throwing darts at pricing targets while blindfolded. Pioneer’s new 50-inch 1080p plasma has a retail price of about $10,000. So does Panasonic’s model, which (ahem) has a screen 15 inches larger. How long are these companies willing to concede sales to 1080p MD RPTV sets that are $6,000 to $7,000 cheaper?

There’s a dark side to the 1080p "gold rush" and that is the observed decline in quality of standard-definition video processing. A few companies do it right; many are failing terribly. In recent tests of front projectors, LCD HDTVs, and video scalers, I found composite video decoding and de-interlacing performance to be generally average to mediocre. In fact, one company that made its original reputation on 480i processing seems to have slipped considerably with its latest video scaling chips.

That could spell trouble for consumers who have bought the latest 60-inch 1080p RPTV and plan to watch basic cable most of the time. HDTV may be all the buzz now, but the majority of TV programming today is still very much good old 4:3 interlaced SDTV. Trust me, it looks pretty awful on some 1080p displays, which means some of these sets will probably go back to the big box stores in short order.

In the end, the 1080p gold rush will probably line the pockets of Best Buy and Circuit City more than it will those of HDTV manufacturers. There are just too many prospectors staking their claims while prices and margins continue to drop.

The question is, how many of those prospectors will strike it rich - and how many will go broke?